Thursday, December 08, 2005

Prosecutor, Time Reporter Meet

Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald spent more than an hour Thursday morningat a law firm representing Viveca Novak, a Time magazine reporter whosetestimony was being sought in the CIA leak case.

Fitzgerald and an associate emerged from the office of attorney Hank Schuelkeat 11:30 a.m. EDT, declined to answer questions and rode away in a taxi cab. Ashort time later, a court stenographer left the building.

An hour later, Schuelke escorted Novak from the building and helped her flaga taxi. He declined comment when asked if she had provided sworn testimony inFitzgerald's investigation of the leak of an undercover CIA agent'sidentity.

The special counsel's meeting with Novak and Schuelke comes a day afterFitzgerald spent three hours meeting with grand jurors about the leak inquiry,which so far has yielded the indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief ofstaff, I. Lewis Libby.

Fitzgerald had been seeking testimony from Novak about her conversations withRobert Luskin, an attorney for deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove, whois still under investigation.

Novak, a reporter in Time's Washington bureau, had agreed to cooperate inFitzgerald's investigation, according to an article in the Dec. 5 issue of themagazine.

For nearly two years, Fitzgerald has been looking into who in theadministration leaked the identity of CIA undercover agent Valerie Plame'sidentity to the news media.

Plame's CIA status was disclosed eight days after her husband, former U.S.ambassador Joseph Wilson, publicly accused the administration of twistingintelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat in the run-up to the war.

Rove's legal problems stem from the fact that it was not until more than ayear into the criminal investigation that he told the prosecutor aboutdisclosing Plame's CIA status to Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper on July 11,2003.

Rove says he did not disclose the Cooper conversation to investigatorsbecause he had forgotten it. It occurred days before Plame's identity wasrevealed by the media.

The presidential adviser revealed the CIA employment of Wilson's wife toCooper two days after another conversation in which Rove and conservativecolumnist Robert Novak discussed Plame's CIA status.

Robert Novak was the first journalist to disclose Plame's identity, on July14, 2003. Cooper co-wrote a Time article about Plame on July 17, 2003.

Robert Novak and Viveca Novak are not related.

Viveca Novak specifically has been asked to testify under oath aboutconversations she had with Luskin starting in May 2004, the magazinereported.

Novak, part of a team tracking the CIA case for Time, has written orcontributed to articles in which Luskin characterized the nature of what wassaid between Rove and Cooper, the first Time reporter who testified in thecase.